Leadership in a Social World: Be Hands On & Make Your Own Technology Decisions

A note on leadership from a frustrated Klososky about the way leadership is done and taught today.

While John Maxwell may teach traditional leadership skills, many don't apply today (connect not just communicate is not one of them), because they're hands off some of the most important aspects of what drives business today, notably technology.

If you’re going to stay relevant and not just prosper, but be sustainable, suggestions for the table:

1. As a leader, you need to make great technology decisions which means not outsourcing all of those decisions. In other words, don’t let your token geek make all the decisions. If you’re going to lead it, you need to understand how to make good technology decisions, you can’t just give it away.
2. You have to be better at predicting the future. As the economy speeds up, you have to make decisions faster and faster, so you need to see further into the future.
3. Get systems in place that help automate things to make you more productive.

Systems, says Scott are key to sustainable success. Below are the key components:

1. Web Properties: build websites using a constituent based design. (destination sites).
2. Social Technologies (conversations) . Engaging with people nearly every day through the various platforms out there, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, forums, discussion threads,  YouTube. (stat to get you to reconsider if you're not playing there: 2880 hours of uploads every two hours).
3. Mobile: You can't ignore mobile. Google says over half of the searches this year will be from a mobile device.  

ALL PIECES need to be integrated, so get them ALL into your net and then move them around.

1. Traffic – “I don’t know where they’re going to connect with me, as long as they get in my ‘net.’ Traffic is how do I drive people into my net wherever that may be.
2. Measurement – people generally do a poor job at measuring what’s happening in their digital marketing. They don’t measure things like conversion rates, i.e., what percentage of people took action after coming into my net?